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The firm said: “We have opened more new pubs in recent years and will be opening additional venues throughout the coming year and beyond.”

When Wetherspoon chairman Tim Martin, who founded the company in 1979, visited Plymouth in November 2017, he told The Herald it was still “quite possible” to find more Plymouth sites outside the city centre.

He said expansion was driven by a combination of looking at areas where the firm has no presence and reacting to buildings that became available.

Or as Mr Martin, who lives in the Exeter area and spends a large proportion of his time touring the chain’s pubs, put it: “A bit of targeting and a bit of opportunism.”

Both of which apply to Plymstock.

The Co-op closed its store at Plymstock Broadway in 2014 with the loss of about 40 jobs.

The company said the decision had been taken with “the greatest reluctance” and was due to the store’s poor trading performance.

Plymstock Broadway has since then been hit by several shop closures including the loss of household goods business Homeworkx and Wool Palette in 2017.

But it did gain a Costa coffee outlet in February 2017.

Costa, like Wetherspoon, is also a chain experiencing huge expansion.

In November 2017, Wetherspoon said sales growth nearly doubled in the first quarter of its financial year, compared to a year earlier, with like-for-like sales for the 13 weeks to October 29, 2017, rising 6.1 per cent compared to growth of 3.5 per cent a year earlier.

The company said sales continued at a “slightly higher-than-expected level”

In September 2017, Wetherspoon posted an increase of almost 28 per cent in annual pretax profit, saying the wet British summer last year had boosted sales.

But the company, led by staunch Brexiter Mr Martin, has been hit by higher costs related to its purchases made in foreign currencies following the drop in the value of sterling since the Brexit referendum.